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Inkdeath (Inkheart) | 
 enlarge | Author: Cornelia Funke
Publisher: The Chicken House
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $13.95
You Save: $11.04 (44%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 175
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 656
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 6 x 2.4
ISBN: 0439866286
EAN: 9780439866286
ASIN: 0439866286
Publication Date: October 7, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The Adderhead--his immortality bound in a book by Meggie's father, Mo--has ordered his henchmen to plunder the villages. The peasants' only defense is a band of outlaws led by the Bluejay--Mo's fictitious double, whose identity he has reluctantly adopted. But the Book of Immortality is unraveling, and the Adderhead again fears the White Women of Death. To bring the renegade Bluejay back to repair the book, the Adderhead kidnaps all the children in the kingdom, dooming them to slavery in his silver mines unless Mo surrends. First Dustfinger, now Mo: Can anyone save this cursed story?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 36 more reviews...
 I Love Inkdeath January 8, 2009
Inkdeath, Cornelia Funke's stunning ending to the Inkheart Trilogy, takes place in a magical world that has come to life from the pages of a book in which anything can happen. I really enjoyed this book for many reasons. I found it to be one of those books that is impossible to put down. It really draws you in and is full of cliffhangers. It is the story of people who originally lived in our world but have traveled to a magical place called the Inkworld after a special book was read aloud. At the time that this story takes place, the Adderhead, a villainous king, is immortal. This book is about the Bluejay, a robber who resembles Robin Hood, and his family and friends and their plight to take away the Adderhead's immortality. It is a marvelous book because of its excellent characters and plot.
The characters in Inkdeath are one of the aspects of the story that make it so great. There are quite a few characters in this book, and each one is very different. The characters draw you into the story because they seem so realistic. Although the protagonists are full of kindness and bravery, none of them are perfect. An example of one of these characters is Fenoglio, a writer who can control the Inkworld but who is always either exceedingly vain or convinced that he is a failure. Because the characters are so human, it is easy to relate to them. Another way that Cornelia Funke makes the characters seem more real is the way in which the story is told. Every chapter is told from a different character's point of view. This makes is easier to understand the characters and their decisions. The villains in this story are very disgusting and evil and many of them are characters that you love to hate. The following quote is an example of the way Cornelia Funke makes the Adderhead, one of these villains, seem so real and loathsome that readers will cringe everytime they read the Adderhead's name. The quote comes from the time in the story when Orpheus, another villain, first meets the Adderhead. "And of course Fenoglio's description had said nothing about that devastated face, the pale and puffy flesh, the swollen hands. Every step the Adderhead took seemed to hurt him. His eyes were bloodshot under their heavy lids. They watered even in the sparse candlelight, and the stench given off by his bloated body made Orpheus want desperately to cover his own mouth and nose." (Pgs. 375-376). The vivid way that the characters are descibed and the faults in all of the characters that make them seem human make Inkdeath an excellent book.
The plot of Inkdeath is another well done aspect that makes this book so excellent. There are many different conflicts that are woven together in this story; each of the main characters seems to have his or her own worries. There is also the major conflict, the Bluejay's battle with the Adderhead, with which all of the characters are involved in some way. All of the miniature conflicts and climaxes make the story more interesting. This is a very suspenseful story and is almost impossible to put down once you start reading it. Every time things seem absolutely hopeless and it seems that the characters can find no way to solve all of their numerous problems, something happens to turn things around. Likewise, every time things seem to be going well and the end seems to be in sight, something happens to take away that momentary hope. This balance really keeps the reader hooked and makes this an enjoyable story.
Many people with different tastes in books will love this story. It is a book for people of both genders and all ages. Lovers of adventure will especially like this book because it is so full of excitement. Fantasy lovers will also enjoy this book because it is full of magic and fantastic creatures that are described in vivid detail. However, I think that people who take joy in other genres of books will also like this book because of it's wonderful characters and plot. I think that lovers of such books as The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter novels will enjoy this book because those books are like Inkdeath in many ways. Many different people will enjoy Inkdeath because it tells a lovely story full of courageous heroes and loathsome villains.
Inkdeath has many similarities to the first two books in this trilogy, but there are also some striking differences between it and the others. Overall, Inkdeath is more similar to Inkspell than to Inkheart. Inkheart takes place in the regular world and its main villain is a man named Capricorn. Both Inkspell and Inkdeath, however, take place in the Inkworld, and among the many villains present, the Adderhead is a main one. One difference between Inkspell and Inkdeath is that all of the characters are working on fixing their own separate problems in Inkspell, whereas in Inkdeath all of the characters have their own worries but are more focused on working to save the Inkworld. Another difference is that two main characters, Meggie and Farid, are no longer very much in love with each other in Inkdeath. This is a big change from Inkspell where there was a lot of time devoted to them being in love. Also, I think that Inkspell is darker and scarier than Inkdeath is. Though Inkdeath has several important differences from the other books in this series, I think that fans of the series will very much enjoy this conclusion to the story of the Inkworld.
Overall, Inkdeath is a very entertaining novel. It is very suspenseful and full of adventure. The characters seem very real because they all have weaknesses and find some challenges very hard to overcome. There are some things that I would have done differently had I been the author, but generally I think that both the plot of the story and the way that the story is told are excellent. I highly recommend this book both to people who have read the earlier books in the series and to those who have not, because I think that this book is the best in the series.
great gift for kid January 7, 2009
It came quickly. Good price. It was a great X- mas gift for my kid.
 Sad to see it end this way January 2, 2009
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Perhaps this book is payback for Cornelia Funke allowing filmmakers to destroy "Inkheart" for their, I don't know, convenience maybe, a la "Eragon." This book reads as though Ms. Funke struggled with the burden of tying up a thousand loose ends in her immense story-world, struggled and surrendered.
I was the reader who brought to life the "Inkheart" trilogy, reading aloud to my family. We came to love the Inkworld in all its rich detail, warmly fleshed-out characters, and fairy tale roster of fantasy creatures. We enjoyed indulging in the Inkworld despite all of the author's wrong turns, and anyone who read the first two books may feel the same.
The first book was marvelous, enthralling. The second, even more consuming, we couldn't wait for reading time each night, though I had to omit large portions of Ms. Funke's gore from the reading to little ears (while also deleting myriad "good heavens" and other too-frequently repeated phrases, perhaps unfortunate artifacts of the translation from German).
With "Inkdeath," the characters' continual despair and sadness through the first one-half of the book became a running joke with my audience. It got to the point where every time they heard the words "despair," or "cry," my listeners laughed out loud. Yes, 300 pages were too many to establish that life sucks inside a dark story. Real people find ways to cope. Storybook people should too.
Ms. Funke's Inkworld departed the second volume, "Inkspell," with a fistful of teasers. Orpheus entered the Inkworld, Dustfinger departed, leaving devoted Farid desperate to conjure him back. The Adderhead was left immortal, an untenable situation, while Cosimo, his double and his father were all dead, Lombrica taken over by Argenta. Fenoglio and all the Folcharts were inside the Inkworld, save the ultimate book fanatic Elinor. Basta was dead, but Mortola was still at large.
Ms. Funke concealed from us, in "Inkspell," Mo's sabotage of the book of immortality and anticipation that the villain's demise was imminent. Why she withheld this key detail until "Inkdeath" is hard to understand, unless she conceived it in the interim. We had been left wondering why Mo would do such a towering wrong as to hand the story's arch villain endless life, with only a vague notion of undoing it someday. Otherwise, the act was selfish and inconsistent with his character.
"Inkspell" was a fascinating exploration of the idea of entering the very story that one is reading. One of the most intriguing elements was how the author, Fenoglio, failed in his attempts to control the Inkworld by writing more pieces for his mystically endowed readers to bring to life. Fenoglio underestimated the complexity of the world he imagined, failed repeatedly to grasp how his book (or the readers) had merely set a world in motion, a world rapidly gaining its own logically consistent life.
From this point, Ms. Funke chose to spend the entirety of "Inkdeath" marching ponderously toward the undoing of the Adderhead's immortality. She struggles with the scale of her story and loses many of her characters along the way. Entire chapters are wasted telling us how Elinor pines to join her relations in the Inkworld, the reader Darius conveniently nearby as the obvious setup for what comes next. Meggie, central character of the first two novels, is a cardboard cutout of her former self, with a new and entirely irrelevant love interest perhaps serving as an apology for why she's uninvolved in deciding how this whole thing turns out. Farid never even puts up a fight to keep her. Clearly, Ms. Funke lost interest in these characters, which is offensive to readers who came to love them.
Obviously Dustfinger comes back, but not by the fast-turning-trite path of the reader's art, not by Fenoglio's reworking, or via Orpheus's manipulations. This is a fine turn by Ms. Funke, reviving Dustfinger with strings attached, not violating the strictures that had prevented Fenoglio from necromancing his beloved Cosimo.
But in the end, Dustfinger's presence is pretty much a distraction. We never get an enduring reunion of Dustfinger with his wife, Roxane, no full reconciliation between Dustfinger and his daughter Brianne. Dustfinger does little to decide the conclusion and acts pretty much as a red herring.
The wondrous innovation of "Inkheart" was Mortimer Folchart, the book doctor whose voice had unpredictable, dangerous power when used to read aloud. His voice...did it open the door to a world that already existed, or did it give life to the otherwise dead printed word? Rich innovation by Ms. Funke, wasted thereafter. Throughout the rest of the series, Mo never again used the power of his voice to do anything. Appalling oversight. Conceivably, Mo could have read characters out of any book that existed in the Inkworld, but that avenue was unexplored.
Instead, other readers--Meggie, Orpheus, even the milquetoast Darius--were allowed to perform the act with increasing nonchalance. Ms. Funke merely dismissed the previously ominous risks involved--you know, the one that deposited Resa Folchart into the Inkworld in the first place. How did those risks change when reading about the same story that one was inside? We never learned.
Many pages are wasted on Fenoglio turned pathetic drunk lost in his failures, when any author would more likely remain endlessly fascinated with the ability to interact with characters he himself had written. This is a plot conceit used by Ms. Funke to pad a story that needed no padding, had plenty of characters to explore. She temporarily suspended Fenoglio's ability to write so as to explain why he wasn't trying to regain control of his story. Fenoglio already had experienced spectacular failure; no need to waste thousands of words explaining why he might be having a hard time deciding what to do next.
Instead of indulging in her most developed characters, Ms. Funke elaborates on Orpheus, Princess Violante, and her awful son Jacopo.
Violante has to be fleshed out if she's to inherit rule over the Inkworld once her father passes. All in all, she is a bore. Jacopo goes from being an annoyance to taking some of the most decisive actions in the entire series. The story turns on Jacopo! Perhaps the author thought this clever. Depriving the story's better characters of these significant actions left them lacking. Surely Dustfinger, or the Black Prince, deserved a hand in deciding the outcome.
Orpheus is a satisfyingly repugnant villain whose end never comes, leaving open the future of this series. This is hard to stomach. Given that everyone remains to live in Fenoglio's story, why wouldn't Orpheus continue to torment them with distortions of Fenoglio's words? After 683 pages, "Inkdeath" comes to an abrupt halt without resolving any but the most obvious plotlines.
Ms. Funke was so good at departing from convention in her first two books, I wish she had done so again and dispatched the Adderhead within the first hundred pages of "Inkdeath." Life after his passing should have been the conclusion that got fleshed out. The battle between Orpheus and Fenoglio to write the future of the Inkworld! The largely forgotten argument over how and when to return to the real world! What becomes of Dustfinger and Roxane! Meggie's potential as reader and writer, hinted at in "Inkspell" but never elaborated! The story that should have been written all got crammed into a few dismissive paragraphs at the end.
I thank Cornelia Funke for creating this wonderful set of people and places. They are powerful fuel for any good imagination, and for many years my family and I will keep the Inkworld alive in our minds, working to imagine where this story could have gone.
The all-time best children's author of our time. January 1, 2009
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love Cornelia Funke and anything she writes. I recently discovered a book that told of a young lady that put the original german text of one of her beloved tales onto the hands of the Hary Potter Series publisher. I am so grateful for that! This book was an AMAZING conclusion to the series! Full of new characters and the ones I have come to care about, too. I am DYING to see how they roll this new Favorite Fairytale out in Hollywood. Just 22 days from the moment I am writing this until the movie version of the first book, Inkheart!
Good, but not spectacular December 31, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was highly anticipating the release of Inkdeath for months and months, and was hoping that it would conclude the trilogy with as much style and flair as Inkheart began the story and Inkspell continued it. In some regards I was disappointed, but in others was satisfied.
Overall the book is much darker than Inkheart or Inkspell, and I found the middle rather dragging. However, the darkness works with the story and makes sense. After all, the book is called Inkdeath. Cornelia Funke's husband died while she was in the process of writing it, and I'm sure that influenced the tone to some degree. The quality of writing is the same, though, magnificent as always.
I was disappointed in some characters, as almost all of them had changed to some degree, but in some the change made sense.
If you have been loyal to the trilogy definitely read this book, but come into it with small expectations and you'll be happier when you finish it.
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